


Trip and Fall in Love

by PriorityNaps



Series: SNIPPETS [5]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Autumn, Fluff, Kissing, M/M, Romance, Roommates, Sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 09:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21389977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PriorityNaps/pseuds/PriorityNaps
Summary: Gintoki takes Hijikata on a walk.
Relationships: Hijikata Toshirou/Sakata Gintoki
Series: SNIPPETS [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1396834
Comments: 9
Kudos: 72





	Trip and Fall in Love

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I could write a lot for this series in October and November, but.

“C’mon, it’s just a little more ways in this direction!”

Gintoki’s voice is loud and clear in the crisp noon air. It echoes once or twice before fading away completely, and then they’re both treading in silence. Well, it’s not really silence, the leaves are making loud crunching sounds beneath their feet and every once in awhile Hijikata’s ears pick up on some animal noise.

The sun is well above their heads in the sky but partially obscured by thin clouds. It’s not very bright, nor are its rays exceptionally warm. Really, the only good it’s doing right now is enhancing the view. The shades of red and mustard and orange are visible everywhere, bright and bold against the dark tree bark they’re surrounded by. 

That’s right, they’re in the middle of a forest, which Hijikata suspects translates to nowhere. He can’t exactly trust Gintoki when it comes to navigation, the guy gets lost too easily for his own good. And right now he most definitely shouldn’t be relying on the idiot, because Gintoki is so excited and jumpy he’s sure to be distracted. 

He hears a shout in the distance, followed by a prolonged fit of laughter. He turns his head in the direction of the sound to see a large flock of birds soar up and away. 

“Assholes!” Gintoki gripes a little ways ahead of him. “People have no respect for nature these days, do they?”

Hijikata scoffs. “You’re one to talk.”

“Oi, oi, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You literally walked over a flower bed in the park one time. No, more than once. And that’s just scratching the surface, I could go on forever.”

“Ok, but that was the old me! I’m different now.”

“You chased after crows on campus with a branch three days back.”

“Like I said, that was the old me.”

Hijikata narrows his eyes at Gintoki's back and drops the subject. 

“Oi, mind telling me where we are?”

“Nope!” is the cheerful response.

Hijikata grits his teeth. “Do you _ know _where we are?”

“Yup!”

Why the one-word answers? There’s no way Gintoki knows where they are, is there? He’s just… putting up a fake front or whatever.

Regardless, this place truly is beautiful. Hijikata prefers dark colors to light and shades of blue or green, but the fall foliage never disappoints. It takes his breath away, really. Spring is also nice, but fall is a completely different story. It’s like the world feels alive around him, what with the constant breezes and little animals scurrying around. Plus, he thinks it’s way cooler watching leaves change color instead of looking at blossoms sprouting on tree branches.

He’s pretty sure Gintoki is not a fan of cold weather. He’s always bitching about shivering and not feeling his fingers, or having to wear extra layers to stay warm. What’s ironic about it, though, is that the guy’s a sucker for cuddling. Hijikata never figured out why but he admits it’s a wonderful feeling, having his boyfriend pressed up against him and sharing body heat. It’s another reason why he likes fall and winter. 

Truth be told, the only downside of this season is that it marks the beginning of a school year. In just a couple of years that will no longer be a problem for Hijikata, but it is one now and that gives him the full right to be irked by it. He has to see faces he doesn’t want to, guzzle coffee like it’s mayonnaise, all that annoying stuff he doesn’t have time for. At least he's committed, though. Gintoki is a whole other story. A lost cause, really. Beyond saving.

“Hey, check it!” Gintoki suddenly says, lifting an arm to point to his left. He’s still a few steps ahead of Hijikata so the latter has to catch up first before getting a look. 

It’s... a deer? Two of them, actually. One is a bit obscured by a particularly thick tree trunk and only its head is visible. He’s guessing the one without antlers is female, though she appears to be a lot younger than her male companion. Both of their coats are not the warm chestnut brown color like they are in warm weather. Now it’s a strange combination of brown and gray. This always happens to them sometime mid-September and Hijikata doesn’t know why, though it’s probably got to do with the overall drop in temperature. 

“Are they married?”

“How can _ deer _ be married, dumbass?”

“I dunno, maybe they just…” Gintoki goes silent for a minute and he curls his lip in this weird way that tells Hijikata he's thinking hard. “Yeah, I dunno.”

“Thought so.”

They watch the deer stick their noses in the ground a few times then turn their heads this way and that. It’s obvious they’re completely relaxed, which is nice because every other time Hijikata’s seen a deer, it’s racing down the damn street or causing some sort of ruckus with traffic. 

“Ah, so romantic,” Gintoki says. 

“What’s romantic about that?”

“What d’you mean? Look at it: two mates just spending time with each other, enjoying the view and each other’s company.”

That... sounds suspiciously like what they’re doing, doesn’t it?

“You’re talking about the deer, right?” Hijikata asks.

Gintoki turns to him. “Eh?”

“When you said that stuff, were you referring to the deer?”

“Well, duh. What, you thought I was talking about those two birds up there?”

"Eh? Where?"

Gintoki points again, and sure enough, there are two fat little birds perched on a thin tree branch. There is no nest close to them, and it’s a little surprising that Gintoki managed to see them. They’re small, really small, and none of their colors are bright or noticeable. Robins, probably.

“Don’t they lay blue eggs?”

“Who, robins?”

“Yeah.”

Hijikata nods. “You won’t see any now, though.”

“I’m aware, Toshi-san, thank you.”

He gets an elbow to the gut for that and while he bends at the waist and starts whining, the deer walk off. It wasn’t from them talking, because they don’t look frenzied or panicked. Hijikata watches them go, then turns his attention back to the birds.

On second thought... they’re not robins. Are robins that fat and small? No, right? Plus, those birds have tufts of white and grey on their bellies. And their faces are orange, too. Don’t robins have black feathers on their faces?

“Hey, those aren’t robins.”

He’s answered with silence on Gintoki’s end, and when he looks over the guys still clutching at his middle and whispering barely-audible curses to himself. Hijikata has half a heart to hit him again.

“Oi.” He pokes his cheek. It’s warm, he can tell just by pressing the pad of his finger into the flesh. And he’s not even shocked or anything, because the bastard’s always warm. His nose might be bright red, or his teeth might be chattering, but he’s literally Hijikata’s source of heat in any kind of weather. 

He leaves his finger where it is, moving it around to make figure eights and random swirly patterns on Gintoki’s cheek. Nothing he does gets a reaction and he actually considers giving an apology, but come on. This is Gintoki, the melodramatic child in an adult’s body. He’s probably staging this whole thing to get some affectionate form of pity. 

Eh, he’ll live.

He gives Gintoki a pat under the chin then looks back at the birds. One of them is hopping on its tiny legs and getting closer to the other one. It looks comical, like a fat little ball of fluff with two tiny sticks poking out the bottom. Hijikata lets out a small chuckle and his eyes involuntarily soften when the two birds make contact and nuzzle against each other with these small chirping sounds.

He hears a groan, and that probably means Gintoki is now recovered. 

“Feel better, dear child?”

“Shut up. That was the most painful one yet.”

“What, are you keeping track? You made up some scale and you measure each time?”

“_Nnngh_… no. But don’t think I didn’t hear you laugh at me.”

Laugh at him?

“Huh? When?”

Gintoki finally rights himself and dusts off his pants. “Just now. You chuckled, or something.”

“That wasn’t at you, bastard.”

“Oh yeah?” Gintoki crosses his arms and winces a little when he does so. “Then what was it? ‘Cause nothing was funny about nature last time I checked.”

Hijikata grins and jerks his chin in the birds’ direction. Gintoki looks, but his expression doesn’t change. 

“Uh. What am I looking at?”

“Those birds!”

Gintoki looks some more, and then, “I don’t see any birds.”

“Eh? They flew away?”

They did. Hijikata squints at the branch they were sat on, but Gintoki is right. No fluffy balls with tiny sticks poking out the bottom nuzzling each other. 

“Why, what was funny about them?”

He shrugs. “Dunno. They just looked silly.”

“How so?”

Hijikata shifts so he’s leaning all his weight on his right leg. He can’t think of a way to answer Gintoki’s question without it sounding stupid or childish, but he goes for it anyway.

“Y’know. They’re just these fat little balls of fluff and it’s funny to see ‘em hopping around.”

“Ah. It would’ve been easier to picture that if they were still there, but oh well.” The corner of Gintoki’s lips turns up to form a small smile and he nods slowly. A few beats of silence later, he asks, “Anyway, what were you saying?”

“Huh?”

“You said something about those birds while I was in suffering.”

_ Suffering? _ What a cheeky bastard.

“Oh, yeah. Were those really robins? They looked kinda different from the ones I’m used to.”

Gintoki scratches a spot on his neck, right above the collarbone. Hijikata watches him do it and when he’s done the flesh has small, thin strips of dark pink. That really speaks for how fucking pale Gintoki is; they’re so bold against the rest of his skin. They look like welts, really.

“As a matter of fact, yeah.”

Hijikata raises his eyebrows. “How d’you know?”

“Y’know the really old Econ teacher? The one with a slightly hunched back and weird glasses?”

Hijikata isn’t taking Economics this year but Gintoki is. There are two professors for that class, one a pretty young lady and the other an oji-san. Being the weirdo he was, Gintoki was hoping for the lady but that didn’t turn out to be the case.

“Urgh, don’t tell me he’s into birds.”

“He is! He has this whole photo album thing filled with pictures of birds. Back when he was younger he traveled a lot to different countries and stuff, and his wife loved drawing and photography. So, combine that with a love for birds and voila! Really, though, I think that album’s thicker than our textbook.”

Gintoki finds it necessary to stick his pinky in his ear and twist it around before continuing. Hijikata grabs his wrist to pull it away and glares at him.

“Sometimes he would spend the full hour and thirty minutes of class showing his album to us. Since we’re in a lecture hall most of the time he sees it fit to snap pictures of the album, put them on a slides presentation, project them on that huge screen, and ramble about them. I remember seeing those chubby birds one time and he said they were robins. They just fluff their feathers up when the temperature drops.”

The end, it seems. Hijikata’s a little taken aback that Gintoki paid attention while his oji-san professor talked about birds for an hour. His normal attention span is so frustratingly short.

Hijikata turns to him, and he’s scratching at his collarbone again. Now there’s a small patch of pink. “Can we start moving or does the poor baby need to kiss his ouchie now?”

“Don’t antagonize me.” Gintoki moves his hand away from his collarbone. “But that is smart. Though I'm not sure I can reach it with my mouth, so…” The little shit actually lifts his shirt by the hem using both hands to expose his stomach. He truly does look like a baby, standing there and waiting for Hijikata to… to…

“Hell to the _ no_. I was only kidding!” His cheeks start burning immediately, and he doesn’t know if it’s because of Gintoki’s request or the sight of his abdomen. It gets him every time, really. There’s just something so alluring about touching Gintoki there, sliding his fingers against the firm muscles and listening to Gintoki’s breath hitch when he brushes against certain spots he's taken care to remember.

Truth be told, if they were at home he might smack one on it, but not right now. No fucking way.

“Aww, bummer.” Gintoki releases his shirt and that’s when Hijikata realizes he was not only staring at Gintoki’s stomach but also holding his breath. He feels the shells of his ears go hot.

He blinks a couple of times and clears his throat. “Okay, then, lead the way. We don’t have all day.”

"That rhymes!" Gintoki exclaims, then turns away from him and starts walking again. Once or twice he scratches at his collarbone and Hijikata is about to ask him if he got bitten by a bug or something, but the words are forgotten when, out of nowhere, they enter a clearing. It’s an almost perfect circle, completely surrounded by trees (duh). The ground is covered by yellow and rust-colored leaves, but what’s different about it is the bench off towards the left.

It’s nothing particularly new, some of the brown paint is peeling and it looks worn from where he and Gintoki are standing. 

Fingers interlace with his own and Hijikata is pulled in the bench’s direction. 

So _ this _ is what Gintoki was up to. God knows how he found this place and yes, it’s very romantically cliche but at the same time, it’s so… Gintoki. There’s close to no surprise that he’d do something like this, it all feels typical.

Typical, but it still does something to Hijikata's heart.

Gintoki lets go of his hand and plops his ass down on the bench, then pats the space next to him for Hijikata to sit too. He does, but not before noting the hearts, names, and initials carved into the wood. 

He leans back to look at the treetops. Almost all of them are bare, the exception being a few branches way up with leaves shaking feebly in the light breeze. A couple of them come tumbling down while Hijikata watches. 

“Lovely, isn’t it?” Gintoki asks, and when Hijikata turns to look at him he also has his eyes fixed upward. 

“Yeah.”

“Wanna add our initials?”

“What?”

“To the bench. You wanna write ‘em in?”

“We don’t have anything to carve with.”

“Sure we do!” Hijikata gawks when Gintoki reaches into his jacket pocket to pull out a pocket knife. 

What’s there to gawk at? This is Sakata Gintoki sat next to him. No way would he be unprepared for something like this. 

“Do you wanna do it or should I?”

Hijikata hesitates. He’s not into doing this kind of stuff, being sappy and romantic that is. Oftentimes in public, he’d still refuse to acknowledge that he and Gintoki are dating. He loves intimacy and being close to him, but when it comes to presenting himself in front of others it’s a huge no-no. 

Still, this isn’t exactly public, per se. No one would know who G or H is, because it could be virtually anyone. Besides, there are probably a lot of other G's and H's on this bench. 

Honestly, he hates how his self-consciousness kicks in at times like these. Gintoki had gone out of his way to bring them here, so the least he can do is give the guy what he wants. 

“I got it.” He stands from the bench and takes the pocket knife when it’s offered to him. His hands have the smallest of tremors in them but he wills for them to stay still. 

The bench is nearly full, meaning it’s an insanely popular spot for couples in this area. Hijikata even pinpoints more than one _ GH _ and his heart flutters a little each time. 

He chooses to get to work on the bench’s back, on the flip side of where the seat is facing. Pushing the knife’s blade up and out of its sheath, he presses it into the wood and drags it down vertically, then repeats the action so there are two parallel lines. Gintoki stands and walks around to crouch beside him, and a hand rests itself close to Hijikata's lower back.

He carves the rest of the ‘H’ in, then a small plus sign, and apparently, that’s Gintoki’s cue to grab his hand.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing, ah? Let go, ‘m almost done.” He pulls against Gintoki’s grip but it’s unrelenting. 

“You were s’posed to write ‘G’ first, idiot!”

“Who cares? It’s the same thing!”

“Nuh-uh! ‘GH’ looks better than ‘HG’, anyone would agree on that!”

“Quit being so picky! And I don’t care what everyone agrees on, I’m putting ‘HG’.” He pulls harder this time and actually gets his hand free, then starts on the curve of ‘G’. Once he’s done with that, two strong arms go around his chest and he gets yanked back so hard he lands on his back with a dull _ thud. _ Gintoki is quick to scramble on top and pry the knife from his fingers. 

“Wha― hey!” 

Gintoki zeroes in on the ‘H + C’, sees it can’t be saved, and starts hunting for a new spot. By then, Hijikata has gained his bearings, but his hair’s definitely a mess, so he just opens the whole ponytail before leaping at Gintoki. He knocks him to the side and somehow, the both of them go rolling. Neither pays attention to the fact that a sharp object is between them and being fought over. Miraculously enough, they don’t get nicked. What _ really _ sucks is that Gintoki ends up straddling his hips while still holding the knife. 

“_Off. _”

“But you’ll tackle me again!”

Hijikata glares at him. “You started it.”

“So?”

“_So_, you just give me the knife and lemme finish what I was doing!”

Gintoki pouts childishly, puffing his cheeks out and crossing his arms. Hijikata secretly kind of likes when he does that.Then, “Kiss first!”

“Huh?”

“I’ll let you finish if you give me a smooch.”

“Ew, don’t call it a smooch.”

Gintoki closes the knife and puts it in his pocket. “Why not?”

“Sounds weird. Now _ off._” He pushes at Gintoki’s stomach and even bucks his hips, but he doesn’t move. Instead, he wordlessly shuffles back so his thighs are lined up against Hijikata’s. He leans down so both forearms are caging Hijikata’s head, then brings his lips to brush his cheek. 

Hijikata knows what Gintoki is doing; he wants him to be initiating the kiss and fine, so be it. He tilts his head until he feels those soft, plump lips against his own. 

It's open-mouth from the get-go and a sigh is drawn out of Hijikata when Gintoki’s teeth come down on his bottom lip. Usually their kisses start out chaste but not now, not with Hijikata sucking roughly on Gintoki's upper lip. His hands clench where they are on Gintoki’s shoulders before sliding down his chest and to his stomach, then― might as well, since they're in a private enough space― bunching his shirt up. 

It’s admittedly something he relishes, drawing out soft noises from Gintoki by tracing feather-light patterns on his tummy with his fingers. They’re somewhat cold now, and Gintoki even shudders a couple of times. Hijikata's lip curls at the corner and he runs his tongue against Gintoki’s. 

Gintoki pulls away with a wet smack of their lips and lifts a hand to run through Hijikata’s loose hair while he catches his breath. Most of it is plastered beneath his head so all he can really do is playfully twist his bangs. He’s got a lopsided grin on, and if Hijikata was still ghosting his fingers over his belly he’d be grinding his teeth into his bottom lip instead.

Speaking of, Gintoki’s lips are nice and red now. The kiss wasn’t exceptionally brutal or anything, so Hijikata guesses it’s just something that happens when they do this kind of stuff. He moves his hand to cup Gintoki’s cheek and gently runs his thumb against the other’s lips. They’re wet with spit, but that doesn’t stop Hijikata, and soon enough he’s tangling his fingers in Gintoki’s perm and pulling him down. 

This time they kiss for only a few seconds. It’s much sweeter and more innocent than the last, which suits Hijikata just fine. The smacking sound is louder, though, and Gintoki rolls off him when they part.

Their bickering had gotten them several feet away from the bench. Hijikata stands up and holds out a palm for the knife, which Gintoki begrudgingly hands over, then walks over and adds in the horizontal line to turn the 'C' into a ‘G’. 

“Put a heart around it!”

“No.”

“A circle! Or square!”

He carves in a rectangle around the letters and closes the knife before Gintoki can say anything else. He shoves it in his own pants pocket, dusting his hands off before standing to relieve his knees.

Gintoki doesn’t stand at first. He just stays there and crouches, eyes glued to the ‘H + G’. A hand lifts to press against the bench and his fingers ever so gently run against the letters. It’s like he’s trying to make sure they’re there, that this bench now knows he and Hijikata hold one of the most important bonds in a person’s life. Others would come here almost every day, and they might not know who H or G is, but did that matter when the meaning behind those letters was clear as day? 

It’s strange, but this makes it feel like they’re relationship is set in stone (or, well, wood). No matter what happens to the world around them this bench will hold H and G right next to each other, the rectangle keeping them safe from all else. He smiles a little, he’s sure he does, and it stays on his face even after he finally stands and faces Hijikata. 

And when he leans in to press his lips to his lover’s for the third time that afternoon, it’s by far one of the most meaningful kisses of his twenty-two years alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, that was _the_ sappiest ending ever.


End file.
